Ex-Soldier Pleads Not Guilty to Raping Woman and Killing Family in Iraq

A former Army private who allegedly raped an Iraqi woman and killed her and three members of her family entered pleas of not guilty to the charges yesterday in a federal courtroom in Kentucky.

U.S. marshals transferred Steven D. Green, 21, of Texas, from Charlotte to a courthouse in Louisville, where he made an initial appearance on one charge of rape and four charges of murder, federal prosecutors said. Patrick Bouldin, a federal public defender representing Green, said last night that Green entered not guilty pleas to all charges. Bouldin declined to comment further.

Prosecutors sought to move Green from North Carolina to Kentucky, because that is where his former unit -- B Company, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment -- is based with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell. FBI agents arrested Green on Friday at his grandmother's home near Asheville, N.C., after he had returned from the funeral of a platoon member at Arlington National Cemetery.

Green left the Army on May 16 after he was sent home from Iraq because of an unspecified "personality disorder." His departure from the service came more than two months after he allegedly planned and carried out an attack on a family in the village of Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.

Federal authorities have alleged that Green and other soldiers went to the family's house intending to rape a young woman they had seen previously. Green allegedly killed the woman's mother, father and younger sister in a bedroom before he and another soldier raped the woman and then killed her, according to court documents.

Green, originally of Midland, Tex., had served 11 months in the Army before his discharge. Army officials said he was honorably discharged before they learned of the alleged attack.

Marisa Ford, chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of Kentucky, said that prosecutors are going to present the charges against Green to a grand jury over the next month, and that an arraignment has been set for Aug. 8 in Paducah, Ky. Federal prosecutors have the case because Green is no longer in the Army. The four other soldiers allegedly involved in the attack have not been identified or charged.